


The Prison Files

by darkandstormyslash



Category: The Thick of It (TV)
Genre: Gen, Prison, Swearing, original character (m) - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-11
Updated: 2015-09-11
Packaged: 2018-04-20 05:40:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,888
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4775738
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/darkandstormyslash/pseuds/darkandstormyslash
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Malcolm's time in prison, told from three differing perspectives.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter One: Degsie

Degsie doesn’t really clock the man the first time he walks in to prison. Oh he looks at him, sure enough, glances over and sees a tall older man with a drawn face apparently in for some kind of white-collar fraud. So far so dull. The man gets lead into the cell next to Degsie’s and doesn’t really make much of a fuss about anything. He probably won’t even be in there very long. Whatever corruption, lie or corporate theft he’s carried out will clearly be deemed much less dangerous or destructive to society than Degsie’s horrendous cold-blooded attempted television theft.

It’s not until a few days later when they’re queuing up for lunch together, that they really speak. The new man is behind Degsie and someone behind him makes a disparaging comment. Honestly, Degsie isn’t even sure what it is, some Prime Minister or something is mentioned and he doesn’t really listen. This new man, Malcolm, is something to do with the newspapers and the government and to Degsie the government is a strange mysterious faraway kingdom. The only newspapers Degsie reads are the sport pages and tabloids with headings like _“Formula One Boss In Coke-Fuelled Drug Orgie”_

So some bloke sounds off about Malcolm, and Degsie’s uneventful lunch is suddenly interrupted by an absolute torrent of angered Scottish; an eye watering epic that starts off with the man’s appearance, covers his likely job, his sisters likely job, his relationship with his mother and his place in the universe which, according to Malcolm, ranks below the level of several ground dwelling molluscs. Degsie is impressed, and by the end of it the bully is looking faintly green, and turns around, sneering, trying to gather some dignity as he leaves. Degsie raises his eyebrows and goes on with getting his lunch. Nobody else makes much of a fuss.

It was pretty entertaining though. Livened up a dull day.

After lunch he picks up the battered and well-worn copy of the latest tabloid he’s managed to get his hands on and heads outside. Malcolm’s there, sitting in the sun reading some posh fancy twat of a newspaper and Degsie feels generous enough to sit next to him. Degsie’s expansive frame spreads out next to Malcolm’s stick-thin cadaver and Malcolm spares him a glance before looking back at the page.

Degsie shakes his own paper out and reads it. They sit in companionable silence until Degsie shakes his head.

“Fucking lost. Again. To fucking _arsenal_.”

Degsie is not an arsenal supporter.

“Reeder’s fucking things up royally.” Malcolm murmurs back.

“We’ll not even make the Premiership division if things continue like this.”

“We’ll need a bloody miracle to get Miller in at this rate.”

“You’ll need a miracle? We’ll need a miracle. We need Alan Shearer back, that’s who we need.”

Malcolm doesn’t reply, but the silence now is almost companionable, and they finish the papers together, sitting out in the sun.

The next day it’s raining. Degsie’s read his paper far too many times but Malcolm, mysteriously, has managed to rustle up the latest issue of The Times. He’s sitting indoors on one of the benches lining the corridors and as Degsie passes, he raises an eyebrow and tugs out the sports pages.

“You want these? I don’t fucking read them.”

“You don’t read the sport?” Degsie sits down and takes the offered pages eagerly. It’s been a while since he’s had such up-to-date information on his heroes.

“Never got into it. All those league tables, teams, money, coaches, managers. Not my thing.” Malcolm says, with an irony that sails completely over Degsie’s head.

“It’s not that. It’s the game.” Degsie gives a nostalgic sigh over the paper and grins, “The beautiful game, eh?”

“Well it used to be.” Malcolm answers, he sounds tired and Degsie glances over at the main paper. There’s a man he vaguely recognises from the news standing in front of a large stone block with words etched into it and he frowns.

“Isn’t that ...” he can’t finish the sentence but thankfully Malcolm finishes it for him.

“Dan Miller, aye.”

“Isn’t he ...?”

“Leader of the Opposition.”

Degsie isn’t sure quite what that means and so nods. “What’s he doing?”

“Dan Miller, my sticky-fingered friend, is standing in front of a large fucking concrete block with every one of his fucking election promises carved onto it.”

Degsie frowns at the picture. “He looks like a pillock.”

“Complete fucking pillock. Would you vote for that man?”

“Nah. Don’t vote.”

Malcolm gives him a slightly shocked look, as if he’s admitted to just fingering his mother or some other socially reprehensible crime. It immediately vanishes though, and the Malcolm sighs, “That is why you, my friend Degsie, are the very dregs of society. All that is wrong with this country, embodied in one man in a football shirt and orange jumpsuit in size extra-large.

The words aren’t said maliciously, and Degsie grins and shrugs. Honestly, he’s heard worse. “Well it’s all politicians innit?”

“They do make up an unfortunately large and unavoidable proportion of politics, yes.”

“It’s all stacked, stacked against normal blokes like me. That’s why I’m in here.” Degsie’s political philosophy is fairly simple. The world is unfair, and it’s unfair against him, and keeps putting him into prison.

“You’re in here for trying to steal a fucking television.” Malcolm answers, for the first time since Degsie’s seen him his face looks actually alive, animated in disbelief.

“Yeah, it’s the system. All rigged.”

“You’re complaining...” Malcolm says slowly and incredulously, “That the criminal justice system is rigged against criminals?”

“Yeah.”

“Jesus fucking wept.” Malcolm shakes his head and stares at his newspaper, then stabs his finger at one of the figures lurking in the back of the photo on the front. “See that little tit?”

“Yeah?”

“He’s fucked, fucked like a horse at a roman orgie. And he knows it.”

Degsie shrugs. The man is tall and skinny, with floppy hair and glasses and wearing a suit. He looks like every other man who hangs around in the back of photos on the front of the big important newspapers. The crossover of cultures tires and exasperates both of them, and they quickly revert back to type. Degsie complains about the football while, in a muttered series of footnotes, Malcolm dissects the news of the day.

* * *

Today, Malcolm’s managed to find a tabloid for Degsie, who’s busily devouring _“Alien Bible Found In Whitehouse”_ when the guards come up.

“Visitor for Mister Tucker?”

Malcolm looks up with a frown, “Who’d be visiting me?”

“Man by the name of Oliver Reeder. Says it’s urgent.”

Degsie isn’t sure if he’s imagining it, but for a moment a look of something like triumph flashes across Malcolm’s face. Then he’s buried back into his paper with a shake of the head. “Tell the useless little twat to fuck off and die.”

The guard raises an eyebrow, “You sure about that? We can ask him if there’s any ... family news?”

The guards are very respectful to Malcolm. There’s a few conspiracy theory rumours as to why, but Degsie’s pretty sure it’s just because Malcolm is polite, well behaved, chats to them a lot, and seems to be able to remember all their names and families. “There won’t be. Not from _him_. Tell him I can send out a friend of mine if he’s that interested in talking to criminals. Degsie?”

Degsie shrugs, “Yeah, I’ll talk to him if he wants.” Degsie’s sister visits him sometimes, to bring him a paper and complain about her kids. Other than that he doesn’t see anyone from outside.

“I don’t think he’ll be that interested.” The guard grins and heads back. Degsie can’t help a flicker of curiosity and glances over at Malcolm when he’s gone.

“Who is it? Your brother?”

“My Judas.” Malcolm says, relishing the word, “If Judas were an incompetent fucking millipede with the social grace of leprosy.”

Degsie nods sagely. “I know a bloke like that.”

They don’t mention Malcolm’s visitor again.

* * *

Sure enough, it’s barely a few months later when Malcolm’s lawyer comes for him, waiting patiently as he says a goodbye to the guards, thanking them, and giving the impression that he knows they have a bloody difficult job without being condescending about it. Degsie’s in his cell, and he bangs a shoe against the bars as Malcolm passes.

“You out then?”

“Looks like it.”

Degsie shakes his head, “Where am I going to get my paper from now?”

“Not a fucking clue.” Malcolm does actually sound relieved to be leaving and Degsie gives a grin.

“Well have fun. You won’t be missed you posh Scottish wanker.”

He can’t see much of Malcolm’s expression, but for some reason as he passes Degsie’s cell with a two fingers up and a half-grin, Degsie thinks he almost looks like he’s going to cry.


	2. Chapter Two: Malcolm

Prison, after everything, isn’t as bad as he’d feared. It’s almost soothing, in a way, to be locked away from all the hounding press, and vicious snakes he left behind in Westminster. When the bars clang shut at the end of the day, leaving Malcolm locked in his little room, it almost feels like he’s managed to lock the rest of them out, rather than locking himself in.

The food’s pretty awful though.

His fellow inmates don’t seem to know who he is, and that in itself is a relief. He makes friends with the guards as quickly as he can, because Malcolm Tucker can always tell where the power lies. The prisoners can be divided into three groups: mad (to be avoided), bad (groups and gangs that work in their own dangerous circles and don’t bother anyone outside them) and sad – other members of the population who aren’t particularly dangerous but have been washed up on the unforgiving shores of the criminal justice system through reasons of desperation or terminally bad luck.

There’s only one real challenge a few days later when someone with a bone to pick identifies him as “Tucker! Dan Miller’s Tucker? What happened, suck the wrong cock in Westminster?” The voice is vaguely posh, the criminal’s hands soft and flat and Malcolm feels no danger in turning around and screaming every insult under the sun he can think of, right into the man’s shocked face.

Nobody bothers him after that.

He even makes, for want of a better word, a friend. A man so far removed from Malcolm on the political and philosophical spectrum that he might has well be living on the moon. Degsie is everything Malcolm went into politics to avoid; large, dull, entitled, uninterested – the kind of people he’s spent his life fighting to help almost as much as he’s been fighting not to have to actually encounter them. His presence is strangely refreshing. He has no idea who Malcolm is, and cares even less about the world he’s come from.

It’s nice to have someone to talk to. The guard who brings in his papers is more than happy to slip in one for Degsie as well. Degsie realises where they come from and, the second time Malcolm hands him his own paper he shakes his head with a grin.

“Trying to buy my friendship, eh?”

“I’ve always found it’s a fairly reliable way of making friends.”

Degsie laughs at that. Malcolm finds it very easy to make Degsie laugh.

* * *

Things are happening in the outside world. The papers give him frustrating glimpses but not the truth. It’s like trying to understand astronomy by listening to three people discussing Star Wars in Korean, but he manages to piece most of it together. Enough to realise, with a mixture of satisfaction and a sinking heart, that this election is not going to be a victory. It’s not even going to be a close run coalition.

It’s going to be a failure. A wash out.

Steve Flemming pens a piece about how Dan Miller is a modern politician for a new and modern type of politics and then, right there, Malcolm knows they’ve lost. If Miller is desperate enough to bring in Flemming then Reeder’s bottled it, bottled it completely, and if Flemming is trying to sell Miller as a coalition leader, rather than an actual Prime Minister, then they haven’t a hope this side of fuck. It’s frustrating, but also slightly reassuring to know that things genuinely _do_ go to hell without him, even if he knows that he personally won’t be the one to lose out on this.

Malcolm Tucker has a pension, a house, savings, and a few little jobs writing political pieces for journals he can do on the side. Malcolm Tucker is never going to need food-banks or (heaven forbid) disability allowance. Malcolm Tucker has no children requiring education, no babies requiring SureStart centre support, no second bedroom that needs the frantic sourcing of a ten pound note to stave off the terrifying cost of moving house. Malcolm Tucker can pay for private healthcare as the NHS is bled and beaurocratised to death. Malcolm Tucker is not a person who will suffer when his party looses the election.

There are so many more who will.

“It’s all gone to shite Degsie.” He says morosely, staring at the political pages.

Degsie shakes his head at the sports pages, “Gone to shite in a handbasket.”

The one bright spot of enjoyment, in an otherwise rather dull and repetitive existence, is that Ollie Reeder tries to visit him. That makes Malcolm laugh, it makes him laugh that evening in his bunk until he’s almost sick. How desperate had Reeder been to scuttle out to a prison, of all places, to consult a dried up old has-been, a political Alan Shearer? The next day he’s almost regretting it, almost wishing he’d gone to meet the boy. To confront him, to demand an explanation, to watch Ollie wet himself in front of a bunch of sniggering policemen.

He’s trying for good behaviour. He can’t help feeling that crashing through the visitor’s glass, wrapping his fingers around Ollie Reeder’s neck and repeatedly bouncing his head off the wall while screaming “WHAT ARE YOU FUCKING DOING YOU USELESS CUNT” might invalidate that somehow.

* * *

It’s a cliché, but prison does change him, even just a brief spell spent mostly reading newspapers and thinking idly of interesting ways to remove Ollie Reeder’s intestines has changed him. If he’d been a younger man, it might have spurred him on to greater action, to more political heights. As it is he just feels a bit sad and cold and useless. Degsie is right, in a way, the system is rigged. Politicians can, with a wave of the pen, re-write legislation to steal hundreds of TVs, not to mention food, power, money and other necessities, away from desperate people at a stroke, with no consequences. While Degsie; mild, inoffensive and cheerfully dim, is carrying out a period of enforced uselessness to society, which will continue once he emerges to steal more electronic goods.

“You won’t be missed you posh Scottish wanker.” Degsie calls out as he leaves. Malcolm automatically grins and sticks up the required number of fingers but for some reason the words give him pause. It reminds him, horribly and terribly, of all the reactions when he first went to prison – the praise from Dan Miller, the sympathy from Nicola, the contrived and hackneyed speeches from all over the political spectrum; fake shock, unconvincing lies.

Nobody would speak ill of the dead.

He’s spent his whole life surrounded by that. By people he doesn’t particularly like and who don’t like him. People who’ve never given him an honest word in his life – all smiles on the outside and twisted deceit on the inside. It suddenly occurs to him that for a few blessed months his best friend has been a man who has never knowingly lied to him. Sure Degsie is dishonest, has no respect for personal property and is about as shallow as a paddling pool but what hits Malcolm with the force of a tidal-wave is: that, Malcolm Tucker, was your life. You spent it surrounded by horrible people while trying to convince yourself you were carrying out some greater good. And in the end you might as well have spent it all stealing TVs with Degsie.

He blinks in the sunlight as he steps out. His lawyer is waiting with a cup of coffee and a discrete private car and, for a moment, Malcolm Tucker almost thinks he’s going to cry.


	3. Chapter Three: Ollie

Dan Miller has removed his door. It was never a big office, not once he was moved out of Malcolm’s old room and into a converted closet down the hall, but it was still Ollie Reeder’s room. A place he could scuttle into and lock out the sounds and terrors of the world around. A place of momentary calm where he could put his hands against his temples and mutter “Fuck, fuck, fuck” until he felt able to move without being sick. His one place of privacy and security now that he barely ever makes it home and Dan Miller has taken away the door.

Ollie is pretty sure he can guess why.

He jumps as Lydia drops the newspapers in front of him with an accusing eye. He hates newspapers now – each one is an unexploded minefield which goes off as he runs across it, showering him with debris and shrapnel. But these papers he’s already read, on his iPhone on the way to work from a late night radio call with someone in Australia. He’s slept, he’s sure of it, he just can’t remember when.

“At least we’re on the front page.” He manages weekly, poking at the picture of the large rock that dominates the front cover and trying to ignore the headline.

“I told you it was a stupid idea.” Lydia snaps.

“Well ... it _could_ have worked. You know, election promises carved in stone, promises to the people.”

“It was your idea. Your ideas never work, Ollie. Shall I show these to Dan Miller.”

“He’s seen them.” Ollie replies moodily, wincing a little as his phone makes a noise. He can’t remember whether it’s the noise for a text message, an email alert, or a twitter update. Either one is bad.

“How do you know he’s seen them?”

Ollie gestures to the empty hinges, “Because he’s taken my door off.”

Lydia stares at him and then gives a disbelieving laugh, “Oh my God. Oh my actual God. Ollie this is because of the damp problem. A letter went out about it last week. You’re actually getting paranoid now.

Ollie shakes his head, not wanting to pursue it. He knows though, that if it _had_ worked, if they’d taken over the pages in a blaze of meaningful glory, his door would very much still be attached.

“Oliver!” Steve Flemming heads towards them, with a leer and a pat on the shoulder for Lydia, who quickly extracts herself leaving Ollie penned in half behind his desk, “Oh dear, oh dear, that didn’t go very well did it?”

Ollie swallows. Steve Flemming is, he knows, another Miller torture-device. He appeared the last time Ollie screwed up and seems to be here to stay. “Well, it wasn’t entirely _my_ fault...”

“Your idea!” Steve puts his hands on his hips, with an exaggerated kindly-old-uncle sort of twinkle that doesn’t look kindly at all.

“We, we discussed it, and everyone agreed.”

“You carried it out Oliver, I’m afraid Dan is _particularly_ unhappy about this –“

“You said any media coverage was good coverage...”

“And that’s not a _very_ good reflection of your strategy is it?” Steve’s eye is twitching and Ollie tries to back away into his desk, “We aren’t in the media, Oliver. And when we are, we look like prats, yes?”

Ollie nods, dumbly.

“Is that what we want, hmm? Is that the way we want Dan Miller to come across?”

He shakes his head. His phone makes a different kind of beep. He just wants Flemming to go now, to go away so that he can drown under the next problem, hauling his way out towards another. A continuous succession of frying-pans and fires that he’s jumping between, being burnt at each leap.

He’s certain, somewhere in his head, that Malcolm never had to go through this. Malcolm might have been mostly reactive, leaping after each problem, smothering some, shrinking others, even occasionally failing, but Malcolm was never this overwhelmed, stuck in quicksand that he couldn’t escape with more and more bearing down on him.

Malcolm. He needs to speak to Malcolm.

* * *

Ollie spends a fair amount of time carefully planning his strategy around hounding press, and is therefore slightly insulted when none of them turn up. There’s nobody there at all when he arrives at the prison, hanging around until visiting hours start and feeling, for a brief moment, almost jealous of Malcolm locked away from it all.

 _Prison_ though. He shivers.

The guard goes away to fetch him and Ollie waits, trying to work out what he’s going to say. Maybe he can fling himself at Malcolm’s feet and beg for mercy. Maybe he can try to keep the upper hand; he’s a high-earning political adviser after all, and Malcolm is a _criminal_. Maybe he can order Malcolm –

His brain refuses to go any further with that particular idea and shuts down in self defense.

The guard comes back, grinning a little. “He says he doesn’t want to see you.”

Ollie’s mouth drops. Of all the reactions he was expecting to face this is the one has hasn’t prepared at all for, and somehow the most humiliating. “But ... wait ... he must!”

“His exact words were: ‘Tell the useless little twat to fuck off and die’” the guard adds helpfully.

Ollie feels a sort of rushing in his ears. He remembers Malcolm dismissing Glenn, the disgust and hate twisted in his face. He remembers what he heard about Malcolm getting rid of Nicola, the things he’d said about her afterwards. Now it’s happened to him. Malcolm doesn’t make friends, he makes enemies who momentarily ally themselves with him and now Ollie’s been cast off and he knows he damn well deserves it.

“He did say...” the guard is clearly trying to suppress a smirk, “That if you wanted to speak to a criminal he could send a friend of his out for you?”

Malcolm has friends in prison. Of course he does, Ollie thinks bitterly. Malcolm’s probably running the place. He’s probably got it trained and groomed like he used to have Westminster. Because now, in Westminster, Malcolm’s name is mud. He’s a joke, a bogey-man, an ancient relic of a bygone age. Ollie remembers Lydia asking _“Was he actually that scary?”_ the pitying look in her eyes as Ollie had tried to explain just how terrifying Malcolm had been, _“But how, I mean, he was just a man. He didn’t really have any power even!”_

Ollie certainly has no power. His colleagues despise him, his boss loathes him and the media hates him.

He shakes his head at the prison guard and mutters, “No, it’s fine.” His phone makes another noise in his pocket and Ollie Reeder turns away and walks back out through the prison gates, trying very hard not to cry.


End file.
